• 01 — anais nin the diary of anais nin, vol 2: 1934-1939
  • ⤹ ★★★★☆

"you are one who knows neither death nor finished things. your discontent is creative restlessness, and not a grouch, it is curiosity. you still expect miracles."

people around me do not change as i do, do not sprout new branches. to come back was like being caught in a circle. i struggle against monotony and repetition.

what i call heaven is when none are suffering. if one suffers, my joy is spoiled.

i get deeply tired because everything touches me, i am never indifferent. indifference or passivity are impossible to me.

we are not yet condemned to live in the subway, but it will come. for the moment we only take it to visit friends. the assaults of reality are more and more violent. it becomes more and more difficult to maintain an individually beautiful or integrated world. i have to kill one dragon a day, to maintain my small world from destruction. unfortunately the dragon of reality is too tough to eat, or we would be saving money spent on steak.

the paradise of my childhood was an invented one, because my childhood was unhappy. it was by acting, pretending, inventing, that i enjoyed myself. reality gave me no joy. gonzalo had no need to invent. there was a mountain of legendary magnificence, lakes of fantastic proportions and depths, extraordinary animals, tales of witchcraft of the indians, drama, and color and excitement, and romance.

in proust himself there was an activity which constantly created unreality: one was hyperanalysis, the other self-doubt. so he spins the unreality from which he suffers. he dissolves life.

i cannot do this. i cannot spend a day with empty friends without a sense of waste. i can't give myself to ordinary people.

"you see, other people are sewn naturally, loosely, with a space between the stitches to breathe. i am sewn so tightly, with so many stitches overlapping, that i suffocate. i think of not one but a million things at once."

"you walk over water. others will be afraid. if they follow you they might drown."

• 02 — robert musil the confessions of young törless
  • ⤹ ★★★★☆

you see, they say the universe is governed by mechanical laws that are unshakable. that's all wrong! that's only what the school-books say! the external world is stubborn, i dare say, and to some extent its so-called laws stand firm, but there have been people who succeeded in bending them to their will.

"everything was all so clear and plain in my head before. but now it's as if my thoughts were like clouds, and when i come to these particular things, it's like a sort of gap you look through into an infinite, indefinable distance. mathematics is probably right. but what is this thing in my head, and what about all the others? don't they feel it at all? how does it look to all of them? or doesn't it look like anything?"

for me the world is full of soundless voices.

'because i was interested in something going on in my own mind, something i don't know much about even now, in spite of everything-something that makes all that i think about the whole thing seem quite unimportant.'

• 03 — jennifer lynn barnes the inheritance games
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆
• 04 — hannah grace icebreaker
  • ⤹ ★★☆☆☆
• 05 — tahereh mafi shatter me
  • ⤹ ★★☆☆☆
• 06 — aleksandr solzhenitsyn one day in the life of ivan denisovich
  • ⤹ ★★☆☆☆

“where i come from, they used to say god breaks up the old moon to make stars.” the captain laughed. “what savages! i never heard anything like it! so you believe in god, do you, shukhov?” now shukhov was surprised. “of course i do. how can anybody not believe in god when it thunders?”

• 07 — jeff kinney diary of a wimpy kid: dog days
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆
• 08 — virginia woolf the waves
  • ⤹ ★★★★☆

i do not want, as jinny wants, to be admired. i do not want people, when i come in, to look up with admiration. i want to give, to be given, and solitude in which to unfold my possessions.

what am i? i ask. this? no, i am that. especially now, when i have left a room, and people talking, and the stone flags ring out with my solitary footsteps, and i behold the moon rising, sublimely, indifferently, over the ancient chapel—then it becomes clear that i am not one and simple, but complex and many.

i love with such ferocity that it kills me when the object of my love shows by a phrase that he can escape. he escapes, and i am left clutching at a string that slips in and out among the leaves on the tree-tops. i do not understand phrases.’

i am alone in a hostile world. the human face is hideous. this is to my liking. i want publicity and violence and to be dashed like a stone on the rocks. i like factory chimneys and cranes and lorries. i like the passing of face and face and face, deformed, indifferent. i am sick of prettiness; i am sick of privacy. i ride rough waters and shall sink with no one to save me.

it would have been happier to have been born without a destiny, like susan, like percival, whom i most admire.

i reflect now that the earth is only a pebble flicked off accidentally from the face of the sun and that there is no life anywhere in the abysses of space.

some people go to priests; others to poetry; i to my friends, i to my own heart, i to seek among phrases and fragments something unbroken—i to whom there is not beauty enough in moon or tree; to whom the touch of one person with another is all, yet who cannot grasp even that, who am so imperfect, so weak, so unspeakably lonely.

• 09 — tahereh mafi destroy me
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆
• 10 — jeff kinney diary of a wimpy kid: the ugly truth
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆
• 11 — jeff kinney diary of a wimpy kid: cabin fever
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆
• 12 — tahereh mafi unravel me
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆

"books are easily destroyed. but words will live as long as people can remember them."

"something about the way you hope for things." he shakes his head. "it's so naive that it's oddly endearing. you like to believe people when they speak," he says. "you prefer kindness."

• 13 — tahereh mafi fracture me
  • ⤹ ★★☆☆☆
• 14 — milan kundera life is elsewhere
  • ⤹ ★★★★☆

"we've been neglecting draftsmanship, and that's a mistake. we need to start by getting to know the world as it is before we can go about radically transforming it."

"yes, it's crazy. love is either crazy or it's nothing at all."

a single line of verse or a single paragraph of prose was enough to make him happy, not only because of their beauty but above all because they provided entry into the realm of the elect who knew how to perceive what for others remained hidden.

the more i make love, the more i want to make a revolution. the more i make a revolution, the more i want to make love.

the world of his feelings and dreams, materialized in his poems, often looks turbulent and replaces the actions and adventures that are denied him.

that in the previous society love had been so deformed by concern for money, by social considerations, by prejudices that it could really not be itself but rather a shadow of itself. only the new era, by sweeping away the power of money and the influence of prejudice, would make man fully human and love greater than it had ever been in the past. socialist love poetry is thus the expression of great, liberated emotion.

all revolutionaries love fire.

• 15 — tahereh mafi ignite me
  • ⤹ ★★★★☆

all i can think is how horrible and beautiful it is, that our eyes blur the truth when we can't bear to see it.

and if i do something incredible, he's not even surprised. he expects it.

"water that never moves," i say to him. "it's fine for a little while. you can drink from it and it'll sustain you. but if it sits too long it goes bad. it grows stale. it becomes toxic." i shake my head. "i need waves. i need waterfalls. i want rushing currents."

"there is nothing to fear. nothing to worry about. grieve nothing in this transitory world."

• 16 — jennifer lynn barnes the hawthorne legacy
  • ⤹ ★★☆☆☆

"i don't know how to ski." grayson appeared in the doorway behind alise. "i'll teach you."

• 17 — jeffrey eugenides the virgin suicides
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆

"obviously, doctor," she said, "you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl."

we felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colors went together ... we knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.

• 18 — jennifer lynn barnes the final gambit
  • ⤹ ★★★★☆

better is being my friend and my partner and realizing that you don't get to make decisions for me. better is the way you make me see myself as a person who's capable of anything.

"it's times like this, heiress, that i wish i'd fallen in love with a girl who wasn't quite so good at bluffing."

• 19 — nicholas sparks the notebook
  • ⤹ ★☆☆☆☆
• 20 — harry potter and the sorcerer's stone
  • ⤹ ★★☆☆☆
• 21 — m. l. rio if we were villains
  • ⤹ ★★★★☆

shakespeare is real, but his characters live in a world of real extremes. they swing from ecstasy to anguish, love to hate, wonder to terror. it's not melodrama, though, they're not exaggerating. every moment is crucial.

• 22 — tahereh mafi restore me
  • ⤹ ★★☆☆☆

i have great fear of drowning in the ocean of my own silence. in the steady thrum that accompanies quiet, my mind is unkind to me. i think too much. i feel, perhaps, far more than i should. it would be only a slight exaggeration to say that my goal in life is to outrun my mind.

it took me a month to read war and peace. in english.

he was sitting very still, looking only at the wall, and listening to what i later discovered was a bob dylan record.

• 23 — jennifer lynn barnes the brothers hawthorne
  • ⤹ ★★☆☆☆

december 2.

• 24 — tahereh mafi shadow me
  • ⤹ ★★☆☆☆
• 25 — tahereh mafi defy me
  • ⤹ ★★☆☆☆
• 26 — tahereh mafi reveal me
  • ⤹ ★★☆☆☆
• 27 — tahereh mafi imagine me
  • ⤹ ★☆☆☆☆
• 28 — tahereh mafi believe me
  • ⤹ ★★☆☆☆

we've been growing toward each other from the opposite sides of the same path since the beginning, haven't we?

• 29 — paula pimenta a estreia de fani
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆

(e olha que estava passando a reprise do último capítulo da primeira temporada de the o.c.)

cd - internacionais atemporais 1. enjoy the silence - depeche mode.

paixões da minha vida (ordem cronológica) andré.

• 30 — lynn painter better than the movies
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆

i think the proper line is 'what are you wearing?'

i grabbed his hand and climbed to my feet, and oh sweet lord, it felt like a mr.-darcy-hand-flex-from-the-best-version-of-pride-&-prejudice moment.

"she's pretty, but her face doesn't transform into sunlight when she talks about music."

• 31 — paramahansa yogananda scientific healing affirmations
  • ⤹ ★★☆☆☆

it is better to die (if death has to come) with the conviction of being cured than with the consciousness of a mental or bodily ailment being incurable.

• 32 — barbara pym quartet in autumn
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆

but at least it made one realize that life still held infinite possibilities for change.

• 33 — gaston leroux the phantom of the opera
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆

we must get used to everything in this life, even eternity.

• 34 — william shakespeare a midsummer night's dream
  • ⤹ ★★★★☆

love takes the meaning in love's conference.

• 35 — mona awad all's well
  • ⤹ ★★☆☆☆
• 36 — frank wedekind spring's awakening
  • ⤹ ★★★★☆

melchior, do you agree that a human being's sense of shame is just a product of his education?

• 37 — anne carson the beauty of the husband
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆

"desire doubled is love and love doubled is madness."

what makes you so strong. he thought about it. lust he said. you mean like vincent van gogh. lust for life. no he said. like a bee.

• 38 — raymond carver what we talk about when we talk about love
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆
• 39 — kathleen glasgow girl in pieces
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆
• 40 — stephanie garber caraval
  • ⤹ ★★☆☆☆

it is not fate, it is simply the future observing that which we crave the most. every person has the power to change their fate if they are brave enough to fight for what they desire more than anything.

"you're so dramatic, you would have made a fantastic performer."

• 41 — jane austen northanger abbey
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆

the person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

• 42 — rick riordan the lightning thief
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆
• 43 — clarice lispector a hora da estrela
  • ⤹ ★★★★★

enquanto eu tiver perguntas e não houve resposta continuarei a escrever.

em todo caso o futuro parecia via a ser muito melhor. pelo menos o futuro tinha a vantagem de não ser o presente.

é que só sei ser impossível, não sei mais nada. que é que eu faço para conseguir ser possível?

não esquecer que por enquanto é tempo de morangos.

• 44 — james baldwin giovanni's room
  • ⤹ ★★★★★

perhaps everybody has a garden of eden, i don't know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. people who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. heroes are rare.

"no city is more beautiful than paris."

"if you cannot love me, i will die. before you came i wanted to die, i have told you many times. it is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody."

"fighting will not make you stay. in french we have what is called une séparation de corps, not a divorce, you understand, just a separation. well. we will separate. but i know you belong with me. i believe, i must believe that you will come back."

• 45 — haruki murakami what i talk about when i talk about running
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆

pain is inevitable. suffering is optional.

• 46 — machado de assis dom casmurro
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆
• 47 — william shakespeare macbeth
  • ⤹ ★★★★★

angels are bright still, though the brightest fell. though all things foul would wear the brows of grace, yet grace must still look so.

life's but a walking shadow.

• 48 — anne sexton transformations
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆

a woman who loves a woman is forever young.

one-eye, two-eyes, three-eyes.

i write for you. i entertain. but frogs come out of the sky like rain.

• 49 — lynn painter the do-over
  • ⤹ ★★★★☆

"tell me. what epic ferris bueller shit are we doing first?"

"i remember everything about you, em."

"any girl willing to rip off austen to express her happiness is totally my kind of creeper."

• 50 — lynn painter betting on you
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆

"i eat it all. i just like to eat the cheese and toppings first, then the crust."

i made it about an hour after that, but as soon as they playes "the last time", i had to leave. the entire red release reminded me of charlie, and just hearing it made me think of pine trees and tree-climbing boys.

• 51 — machado de assis memórias póstumas de brás cubas
  • ⤹ ★☆☆☆☆
• 52 — marguerite duras hiroshima mon amour
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆

chance meetings occur everywhere in the world. what is important is what these ordinary meetings lead to.

like you, i too have tried with all my might not to forget. like you, i forgot. like you, i wanted to have an inconsolable memory, a memory of shadows and stone.

i loved blood since i tasted yours.

• 52 — josé de alencar iracema
  • ⤹ ★★☆☆☆
• 52 — marguerite duras hiroshima mon amour
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆
• 53 — stephanie garber once upon a broken heart
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆

"but i'm not a magic thing; i'm just a girl with pink hair!"

• 54 — stephanie garber the ballad of never after
  • ⤹ ★★★★☆

winning at love was less about succeeding in a battle and more about continuing to fight, to choose the person you loved as the one you were willing to die for, over and over.

"in the morning, you can forget it. you can go back to pretending you don’t like me, and i can pretend that i don't care. but for tonight, let me pretend you're mine."

love would always win as long as they never stopped fighting for it.

"there is nothing of equal value to me."

• 55 — stephanie garber a curse for true love
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆
• 56 — jennifer lynn barnes the naturals
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆

"maybe i like being tall, dark, and mysterious," michael, replied, taking a turn so quickly that i had to remind myself to breath. "you're not that tall," i gritted out. he laughed. "you're annoyed with me," he said, wiggling his eyebrows. "but also intrigued."

• 57 — jennifer lynn barnes killing instinct
  • ⤹ ★★★★☆

"dean's mother lives in melbourne."

• 58 — rachel de queiroz o quinze
  • ⤹ ★☆☆☆☆
• 59 — rick riordan the sea of monsters
  • ⤹ ★★☆☆☆
• 60 — jennifer lynn barnes all in
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆

"it’s the fibonacci sequence."

• 61 — jennifer lynn barnes bad blood
  • ⤹ ★★★★☆

"nothing says virility in a man like misplaced anger and counting to the number three."

"you just finally accepted that sometimes, the biggest sacrifice isn't made by the person who gives up her life ... sometimes, the hardest thing is to be the one who lives."

• 62 — jennifer lynn barnes twelve
  • ⤹ ★☆☆☆☆

"i appreciate a good batman reference as much as the next person, but clearly, if i were a character in that particular fictional universe, i would be batman, not robin."

• 63 — clarice lispector a paixão segundo g.h.
  • ⤹ ★★★★☆

pois sei como seu: nunca soube ver sem logo precisar mais do que ver.

ir para o sono se parece tanto como o modo como agora tenho de ir para a minha liberdade.

o mundo só não me amendrontaria se eu passasse a ser o mundo. se eu for o mundo, não terei medo. se a gente é mundo, a gente é movida por um delicado radar que guia.

eu via que o inferno era isso: a aceitação cruel da dor, a solene falta de piedade pelo próprio destino, amar mais o ritual de vida que a si próprio - esse era o inferno, onde quem comia a cara viva do outro espojava-se na alegria da dor.

quanto mais precisarmos, mais deus existe. quanto mais pudermos, mais deus teremos.

pois prescindir da esperança significa que eu tenho que passar a viver, e não apenas a me prometer a vida.

e isto porque ele não é nem um resultado nem uma conclusão, e tudo que a gente acha bonito é às vezes apenas porque já está concluído. mas o que hoje é feio será daqui a séculos visto como beleza, porque terá completado um de seus movimentos.

• 64 — harry potter and the chamber of secrets
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆

'because that's what hermione does,' said ron, shrugging. 'when in doubt, go to the library.'

• 65 — marguerite duras writing
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆

women should not let lovers read the books they write.

even if it's useless to cry, i still think we have to cry. because despair is tangible. it remains. the memory of despair remains. sometimes it kills.

writing is trying to know beforehand what one would write if one wrote, which one never knows until afterward; that is the most dangerous question one could ever ask oneself. but it's also the most widespread.

• 66 — v. e. schwab vicious
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆

"i'm nicholas." eli had always liked the name.

"when no one understands, that's usually a good sign that you're wrong."

• 67 — rick riordan the titan's curse
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆

"i'll show them 'love is worthless,'" silena beauregard grumbled as she strapped on her armor. "i'll pulverize them!"

"a daughter of aphrodite does not wish to be looked at," zoë scoffed. "what would thy mother say?"

"if it weren't for dreams," he said, "i wouldn't know half of the things i know about the future. they're better than olympus tabloids."

your fatal flaw is personal loyalty, percy. you do not know when it is time to cut your losses. to save a friend, you would sacrifice the world.

• 68 — natasha lunn conversations on love
  • ⤹ ★★★★☆

it seems strange to me, how we expect so much from love, and yet devote so little time to understanding it. like wanting to dive into the sea but having no interest in learning how to swim.

one can enjoy the crush just as one can go to a horror film, when one side of your mind is terrified (because you're thinking, oh my god, the monster is going to beat us) but the other side is going, no, it's a film, it's not real. we can play a similar sort of observer and feeler division in the early stages of love.

all the times i had been casually rejected, i realize now, were either future blessings or facts to be accepted, rather than resisted.

giving up that control is about having faith that things happened as they're meant to, and if a plan doesn't go accordingly that's because there's something else waiting for you - you just don't know what it is yet.

you like or love someone when you like or love yourself when you're with them - and that takes a long time to know. you have to let them in.

that's an important lesson in love: no one is too busy to reply to a fucking text message!

it's like mixing paint: sometimes when you mix two people together they make a horrible colour. some people do bring out the absolute worst colours in you and, if that's the case, it's the relationship that's flawed, not you. you're not meant to lose sleep or cry over love. you shouldn't have to fight for it. if it feels like a fight, don't waste your time.

and it's so important to spend your life with people who not only see the goodness in you, but bring it out too.

for me, i think reading is a way to push back on that default setting.

i didn't know that was how love worked. i thought it was a book you read and finished, and once you got through it you know the story. but you never know the story. there's always a new chapter.

you know it's not just about who you find, it's also who you're going to be.

when women allow themselves to have those conversations and express their complexity with honesty, i think they save each other. they saved me lots of times.

if i could have given my younger self a piece of advice it would be: don't confuse love with anxiety, or the risk of danger with the thrill of romance. the harmony and the calm that comes with a true love is extremely precious. it took me many years to learn that.

'grant me the serenity to accept the things i cannot change; courage to change the things i can; and wisdom to know the difference.'

i understood that it was not about being proven right or wrong, but hoping either way. it is that inner glimmer of belief that guides us through the blackness of uncertainty.

all of love requires a risk, a moment where we have to decide to say, 'i'm all in,' even if we've been hurt before.

i've only just discovered that the chorus of david bowie's 'starman' was inspired by 'somewhere over the rainbow.'

because i know that loving her does not mean protecting her from the world; it means modelling courage, to help her to be independent enough to explore it.

• 69 — robert bresson notes on the cinematographer
  • ⤹ ★★☆☆☆

an image must be transformed by contact with other images, as is a color by contact with other colors. a blue is not the same blue beside a green, a yellow, a red. no art without transformation.

my movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects i use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected onto a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.

to create is not to deform or invent persons and things. it is to tie new relationships between persons and things which are, and as they are.

your film is not readymade. it makes itself as it goes along under your gaze. images and sounds in a state of waiting and reserve.

make visible what, without you, might never have been seen.

• 70 — rick riordan the battle of the labyrinth
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆

"i know you believe you cannot make amends," he said. "but you are just as important as your father." "i-" rachel faltered. A tear traced her cheek. "i know you don’t believe this now," pan said. "but look for opportunities. they will come."

• 71 — jeff kinney diary of a wimpy kid: the third wheel
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆
• 72 — jeff kinney diary of a wimpy kid: hard luck
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆
• 73 — rick riordan the lightning thief
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆
• 74 — annie lord notes on heartbreak
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆

it seems like a fault of nature that my unconscious mind could be so cruel.

why is so much of love built out of pretending not to love at all?

i don't want to be with someone who stinks of incense and who probably thinks it makes him look clever if he pretends not to know who kim kardashian is.

this is the central paradox of love: it longs for closeness but the more you achieve it, the less you value what you're attaching yourself to.

i didn't want him anyway, i tell myself. i'm just annoyed that his mismanagement of his schedule meant i spent a number of nights staring at my phone waiting for him to reply when i could have been out having fun. i have no idea what happened, and when people ask i can't explain it because he looked at me like he really fancied me.

'sorry, but i think you're much prettier than her', says vicky at the end of our phone call. i smile 'don't say sorry. my feminism doesn't include women that date men i've gone out with.'

women aren't good at taking criticism. perhaps because we're not allowed to be anything but perfect in order to be valued. men can be all types of wrong and still be wanted.

releasing each other might have been our greatest act of love.

the problem wasn't him. the problem is that when you idolise men and they prove themselves to be normal, human, you're disappointed. i see now that i had built him up beyond something that he wanted to be. and now he was struggling, and i din't like it because he was meant to be a god.

• 75 — annie lord divine rivals
  • ⤹ ★☆☆☆☆

i don't think you realize how strong you are, because sometimes strength isn't swords and steel and fire, as we are so often made to believe. sometimes it's found in quiet, gentle places.

• 76 — jen beagin big swiss
  • ⤹ ★★★★☆

yes. i spent a lot of time alone, but i was rarely lonely because i like my own brain.

it felt like watching a very long audition. the acting was atrocious, mine included. i'm not good at playing the passive female.

few: no, no, nothing like that. don't overanalyze this, or force any symbolism onto it, but i looked at pictures of flowers. greta laughed. "who's gay now?" om: flower porn. from japan?

"and you always overdo it with compliments. it only draws attention to yourself, not the other person. are you aware of that?"

"you're struggling to break free," om said. "it takes an enormous amount of energy-and courage-to free yourself, to follow the path of transformation without abandoning yourself, without fleeing from your pain and all the loss you've experienced. but you need to have more compassion for yourself. that's what's missing."

or the brontë sisters. she had a supreme talent for describing feelings as if they were objects.

gw: you never told me what you're writing. is it a self-help book? om: god, no. it's a novel. gw: about a relationship coach? om: it's a campus novel set in new england. i tend to think of it as the secret history meets animal house.

• 77 — sara shepard pretty little liars
  • ⤹ ★★☆☆☆

before she left for europe, aria would sometimes see boys look at her from afar, intrigued, but then look away. with her coltish, ballet-dancer frame, straight black hair, and pouty lips, aria knew she was pretty. people were always saying so, but why didn't she have a date to the seventh-grade spring social, then? one of the last times she and spencer had hung out – one of the awkward get-togethers that summer after ali disappeared – spencer told aria she'd probably get a lot of dates if she just tried to fit in a little bit more. but aria didn't know how to fit in. her parents had drilled it into her head that she was an individual, not a follower of the herd, and should be herself. trouble was aria wasn't sure who aria was. since turning eleven, she'd tried out punk aria, artsy aria, documentary film aria, and, right before they moved, she'd even tried ideal rosewood girl aria, the horse-riding, polo-shirt-wearing, coach-satcheltoting girl who was everything rosewood boys loved but everything aria wasn't.

• 78 — sara shepard sarah rose etter
  • ⤹ ★★☆☆☆

"i don't know what you're getting at. you're too attached to your own feelings. life isn't so complicated as you make it for yourself."

"everyone is fucking everything up all the time. all you can do is show up and try. this is how you get tough."

they return thir attention to their food, lifting forkfuls of sweet bread and whipped cream to their lips. their world stays the same. it is as if we were never there at all. our two realities coexist without overlapping.

sometimes i miss my mother. or maybe i miss the mother i didn't have. there is a void where a certain love should be, a different type of abyss. what rushes to fill the space? anxiety, doubt, a very specific melancholy.

"no, you don't. you only trust your stupid father. the two of you, peas in a fucked-up pod."

the moments with him that i've crystallized withing me rise to the surface: him reading the newspaper to me in the kitchen while i ate cereal as a little girl, teaching me to drive, taking me to the art museums, introducing me to books, waving as my train left for college, the phone calls, his wisdom, his gray hair and sparkling blue eyes, his temper, his great heart.

• 79 — milan kundera farewell waltz
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆

hegel would be more satisfied wtih you. the dominant part of your face is the brow, which instantly tells everyone about your intelligence.

because to come to the conclusion that there's no difference between the guilty and the victims is to abandon all hope. and that, my girl, is what is called hell.

"maybe it's bad of me," olga went on, "but i don't feel tied to anything. what could i be attached to here?" "even painful memories are ties that bind." "bind us to what? to staying in the country where we were born? i don't understand how people can talk about freedom and not get that millstone off their necks. as if a tree were at home where it can't grow. a tree is at home wherever water percolates through the soil."

"that's because you've only known life in its worst aspect," said dr. skreta. "you've never known how to live. you've always thought that it was your duty to be, as they say, in the thick of things. in the core of reality"

merely by being born intelligent, you right away find yourself in absolute exile.

because the world, which is beautiful, frightens you, sickens you, and constantly pushes you away from its center. how unbearable it is to have dirt under your fingernails and a pretty woman sitting beside you!

• 80 — jeff kinney diary of a wimpy kid: the long haul
  • ⤹ ★★★☆☆